Priscila Rezende born in Belo Horizonte, 1985. Lives and works in Belo Horizonte.
Race, identity, the insertion and presence of the black individual and women in contemporary society act as main drivers and questions raised in the work of Priscila Rezende. From her own experiences as a black and Latin American woman, imposed limitations, discrimination and stereotypes are exposed in intense works, which seek to establish with the public a direct and clear dialogue. The artist proposes to the public to share and be confronted by different realities, in order to displace them from their positions of comfort and to question crystallized prerogatives.
The following interview is filled with hyperlinks to assist readers to better comprehend some of the context in which the artist finds herself. If anything was left unclear, please get in touch.
You’ve had quite a few experiences abroad. I was wondering what are the differences and challenges that you can perceive between establishing a dialogue with an audience in your own country, or with a European audience?
My works usually come from personal experiences. However, I understand that the questions that I bring end up just being a principle, a seed. They are often related to race, and, in recent works, I have dealt a lot with gender issues. No matter how much I start from personal experiences, many of my experiences end up being collective. When I share it through work and meeting other people, I discover that many people have already lived many of these circumstances that I have lived.
In 2016, I had my first experience outside of Brazil. I received an invitation to participate in an exhibition called THE INCANTATION OF THE DISQUIETING MUSE. ON DIVINITY, SUPRA-REALITIES OR THE EXORCISEMENT OF WITCHERY in Berlin and the work I did there, Reeducação (Reeducation), was a work I already had in mind. It was not completely resolved, but I already had an initial idea. When I thought about this work, the curatorial text suggested that the exhibition would think about sorcery issues - in vast spheres. So when the formal proposal was made, I thought about this project in development that I had. I knew that this was the time to put it into practice. It was inspired by one of those personal experiences from my childhood.
I come from a protestant family. When I was about six years old, I went to study at the church school, so I was in contact with the church every day of the week for many years of my life. Near the house where I grew up, there were three terreiros. I grew up thinking that African-based religion was against Christian principles, and it scared me even to look at the terreiro, because I felt that if I kept looking, maybe something bad could happen.
I was an adult when I started to question it, and understand that Christianity did not make sense to me. It was very problematic in my life, even affecting my family relationships, which started to crumble when I left the church. And so, when I began to strengthen my relations with African origin religions, with Afro-Brazilian culture, I wanted to think about it within my artistic practice. That's how I started to create Reeducação.
What came to mind first was the Bible, which was the only source of truth for many years in my life. I was taught and grew up being indoctrinated to follow those words. It is not only in terms of vocabulary and behavior but also decisions we should make and how, are also guided by biblical writing. So I wanted to use this strong element in my work.
I also wanted to reflect on Afro-Brazilian religions, which was something I was taught to see as a problem, and I wanted to bring an element that referred to that, and that helped to rethink the Bible. Thus, I wrote the myth of the creation of the world according to the Yoruba culture. It is important to note that there are many others, but I chose Yoruba because it is a powerful culture in Brazil.
I chose to transcribe this myth on the pages of the Bible using palm oil because I wanted a material that had a religious connection. So, I thought about palm oil not only because it has an intense color but also for conceptual reasons: the oil evaporates, the paper absorbs the oil initially, but over time it evaporates until it disappears. I believe that it relates to our history, as the transmission of Afro-Brazilian culture has always had a strong characteristic of orality. And there were several practices of silencing and erasing this culture and history through the imposition of Christianity.
I started the performance with Genesis, which is to think about creating the world, beginning on the first page. In Berlin, I was unable to write the whole myth because it is massive, and the performance lasted just over an hour. In Brazil, I reenacted the performance and managed to write the entire myth, which took more than six hours.
Before the proposal to Berlin, I had previously created another work on a similar subject, Genesis 9: 25. It is a work that I started to think about from the painting The Redemption of Cam by Modesto Brocos. At the time, I had read a text about the attempts of whitewashing Brazilian culture, and the article referred to this painting. Also, Genesis 9: 25 talks about how religion was one of the pillars to justify black slavery. Europeans used religion to justify and promote slavery and colonization, as a strategy to occupy territories and subjugate native peoples. This work that I did in Berlin also brings similar reflections. About how Christianity was brought from Europe, and how weaponized that religion. Those issues seem relevant also in Europe nowadays. At the time of the exhibition in Berlin, I talked to the exhibition curator, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, about the Yoruba myth and the similarities between this myth and the Bible, and how today there are many immigrants from various places in Europe, and many from African countries and former colonies. Berlin has many people who somehow share this situation of having their culture altered in some way by the imposition of Christianity.
In an international context, have you ever encountered an audience that explicitly did not understand the message?
When I went to the residence in London, at Central Saint Martins, I already had an idea of what I wanted to research. Once I was reading about the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, and I discovered that at one point in history, Liverpool was the largest port of departure for the slave trade, and England dominated that trade. However, I don't think people are aware of this in Brazil, as in schools we mainly learn about Portugal and Spain, but it is not mentioned that at some point, Liverpool led the traffic. I was very intrigued by the museum and this issue of the slave past in England. So, while in London, I dedicated myself specifically to understanding England's involvement in the slave trade.
During the residency, there was a time when I presented my work to university students. I remember that the students who heard me were mainly white, except for a Latin American. And there was a Polish student who said that the things I was talking about and presenting would not make sense in her country because there are no black people there.
I know that Poland's black population is small, as in many places in Europe. However, it is a mistake to think that this problem does not affect them. Firstly, because the world is not made up only of where you live, this type of thinking demonstrates the egocentrism of whiteness and the Eurocentric subject. I understand that many countries in Europe do not have an economy that directly benefits from what others have done, but it still benefits indirectly. One may think that because their country did not enslave or colonize anyone, they are free from this discussion. Actually, even the fact that they are white means that, during the slave trade to the Americas, their ancestors were prevented from being understood as inferior and thus enslaved. Nowadays, they are already enjoying the benefits of white privilege, regardless of where they live. Furthermore, today, people benefit, from the European Union itself, as they can transit and work in countries such as Spain, England, and other nations that have built their economy through colonization and slavery others.
Performance Nau Frágil (2019). Photo by Adam Ciereszko
I believe Nau Frágil (2019) is your work that I like the most. And it is also a work that seems to explicitly explore the conflict between colonizers and colonized. I wanted to hear more about this work and your research process to develop it.
Whenever I am invited to present my work elsewhere, there is a certain level of adaptation according to the location. For Nau Frágil, I was already reflecting on the space of restriction and imprisonment. Initially, I was already thinking about was differentiations and similarities between the holocaust perpetrated in the Nazi period and black slavery. I believe that few people see what happened through the slave trade as a holocaust. We are in the 21st century, and we still suffer the consequences of that, but when we talk about it, many people use arguments that it was a long time ago and should be overcome. However, the holocaust was 75 years ago, and the speech is quite different: it is the speech that asks us not to forget. As it cannot be forgotten, it does not happen again — and, in fact, this is the necessary speech, but not only for Nazism. There are hundreds of books and films on the subject, and the way it moves people is very different from how people listen to us when we talk about black slavery.
So, based on these reflections, I thought about working with the structure of a concentration camp, of a space of restriction, but with black people inside. In order to ask: what if we were in that structure, what would people think?
It also made me think about Shahak Shapira, an artist who produced works criticizing tourists who pose at the Holocaust Memorial, and the artist replaces the memorial with pictures of dead bodies. I saw that, and I kept thinking about Brazil. Where various places of the extermination of black people or that are significant for slavery, are not looked at with respect. For example, in Salvador, Pelourinho has become a tourist place without enough acknowledgment of what it means. Many places where slave quarters were erased or when they still exist, people visit those spaces with a certain nostalgia. There was even a farm in Vassouras, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where there was a kind of tourism for the reconstruction of slavery. White people were hired to dress in period clothes, and there were black people to behave as enslaved, being there to serve whites and tourists, who visited the place to watch this reconstruction of the period. In other words, there is another view on the slavery period, with no respect. In Brazil, people do not go to these places as a vision of something negative, or with a reflection. Instead, those places became a space for entertainment and tourism.
So, this is how the work emerged, then it expanded, as in many other works, the visions are transformed. And I wanted to bring it to this moment. The work thinks about the past and the present, as in recent years, mass immigration, especially in the case of refugees, has been seen as a crisis in Europe. Especially the people who arrive in these places as refugees, they had to take risks to get there. Some people are fleeing war or misery, and many die on the way. But when they arrive, they are abhorred within that new country. And thinking of this movement of crossing the seas made by the refugees, I brought the boat's image. In addition, the boat reminds me of the stories of my ancestors, as the slave ship was also a space of restriction for my ancestors. Centuries ago, my ancestors were forced to cross that sea; they were brought and kept here in restricted freedom. And now, centuries later, we still have people crossing the waters in a risky way to then arrive in a place where they do not find freedom either.
Besides, I also thought about how the loss of these lives is not seen in the same way. I think of the image of the Syrian child who died on the beach five years ago in Turkey. Of course, I do not underestimate the fact that it was horrible and should never happen to any human being. However, considering the repercussion of the fact, black bodies (even of children) do not go viral and move as much as that of the Syrian child - who is also not seen as a white person in Europe, but is by no means seen as a black body. And I was wondering how this commotion is never the same. I feel that there is a disregard for black deaths, and I wanted to question it all in that work.
When I received the invitation to participate in the Poland festival, I thought it was time to start these conversations, even for the history of that place, the city that I presented is called Poznan. Of course, in Poland, a critical site concerning Nazi history is Auschwitz. I have always been interested in visiting since when I watched the Schindler List when I was a child, but for this work, I found it necessary to pay a visit to understand better the issues I was reflecting on. It was obviously emotionally challenging when I visited, and I will never diminish the suffering of those people. However, I still feel somewhat indignant, as there is nothing that I saw or read there that was practiced during Nazism that was not done with enslaved Africans in the Americas before. I even thought that the gas chamber was a Nazi creation, but I learned from a friend that this practice already existed in Haiti, during the Haitian revolution, the French were already doing this. They trapped black people in closed ships, and poured sulfur, which over time evaporated and turned into a toxic gas, so gas poisoning in a kind of chamber was not a new type of cruelty, as it had already been done with black people in Haiti.
I believe that this work may not be so obvious to some people who refer to a past or a history, but I understand that this work starts with the historical question to help people reflect in the present, the question of borders, of being trapped and not being allowed to overcome, this possession of territory, that happens elsewhere. For example, to this day people are migrating from Central America to get to the USA, who end up being trapped. And these are reflections present in this work.
Furthermore, I think that even though when I go to another country and my work does not directly relate to some person's life experience, because of their particular background, I still think people must know what happens here in Brazil. There is an imaginary Brazil sold by our own country and the government of how the country is, especially concerning race. The myth of racial democracy was very well sold outside Brazil, and people really believe that we live in harmony. This unrealistic idea was explicit when I went for a residency program in the USA in 2018. We had to present our portfolio work to the other residents and the team on the first day. And I explained to everyone that I did my job reflecting the fact that Brazil was a very racist country, and there were four artists from African countries, and one of them said he was surprised, as he thought that there was no racism in Brazil. And the truth is that many black people who travel to Brazil believe that they will not suffer racism here.
So I believe that even if my work does not communicate directly to a person outside here about their own experience, I think it is essential that people in other places know what this society is and what happens here. I have seen that as an important part of my work and of other black artists, as we need to communicate to the world what this place is. Perhaps elsewhere, people are living a comfortable life within their raciality, but here we are not.
Performance Bombril at Sesc Pompéia in November 2016
I was introduced to your work through your performance Bombril (2010). And I think that in addition to the relationships between the racist terms that white people use to refer to black hair, I see a criticism in relation to the black body that is seen as a working tool (this seems to return in other works like O Banquete (2019). Could you talk about the intentions implicit in that work?
Bombril was one of the first works I did, in 2010. At that time, I was awakening more consciously about racial issues. I grew up with racist comments that when I was a child, I didn't understand that they were racist, but today I know
When I did Bombril I was still going through a hair transition that took many years to complete. I started straightening my hair at the age of six. When I was between eleven and twelve, I decided for the first time that I wanted to stop straightening, and that break lasted about a year, and when my hair was already getting long, my mom made me straighten again. Shortly after that, when I arrived at school, one of my classmates who used to make several nasty comments about me, when he saw me with straight hair, praised me, said I looked pretty. I thought it was strange, but I thanked him. And then he said "did you sell your house to fix [your hair]?" I did not react but started to cry.
That was one of the lines that most marked me. And then, I continued to straighten my hair until I was eighteen when I decided to make braids, finding an alternative to straightening. I find it curious that when I started braiding my hair, I heard comments that "it was beautiful", something that I didn't usually hear with my hair straightened. And that, the lack of praise, is also a very strong indicator for us. We, black women, with natural hair, are not seen as an example of beauty. We are not within the standard of social beauty. And it impacted my life in many ways. I kept the braids for as long as I could, but I didn't always have the money to pay for them. And it was tough when I couldn't braid, because I didn't know how to handle my hair.
Before doing the Bombril performance, I had gone years without straightening my hair and removed the braids. But still not knowing how to take care of my own hair, and at that moment idealizing curly hair, I wanted to get a perm. Here is another issue, as people say that natural hair is celebrated today, but not exactly. There is a celebration of the perfect curl, but the hair that does not curl is not seen as beautiful. So I still had the idea of curly hair hunting me. That's why I went to a salon to get the perm, but it was so expensive, and I was unemployed, so I wouldn't be able to pay for the procedure. As an alternative, the lady in the salon told me that I could get my hair relaxed and, since I wanted help with it, I agreed to do it, explaining that I didn't want my hair to be straight — I just wanted it to stay a little easier to comb, as I didn't even know how to untangle my hair. We started the procedure, and when she applied the product to my hair, I could smell the guanidine. I explained that I didn't want to use guanidine because later, I wanted to get a perm. However, she said that it wouldn't work because the chemicals didn't match. She had already started to pass, and I didn't have the money to make the perm at that moment. I was no longer able to keep trying to untangle my hair in the texture it was in — I didn't know how to do it right, my scalp would hurt a lot so much that I pulled — thus I trusted and let it continue. Nowadays, I think she had no idea what she was doing, but the result was hair with several different textures, in some parts it was curly, and in others it was straightened. I was so miserable and angry at having to go through that situation. And that was the last time I used chemicals on my hair. When I did the performance, my hair had several different textures because of that failed procedure.
While I was creating that work, I thought a lot about the prejudices that we suffer due to our hair. However, I would say that Bombril is not only about aesthetics, but also about the social position where racism places us. I believe that when people see the work, the image of the work, they sum up the question of hair and the pejorative term that compares our hair to the steel wool and that I believe that almost all of us have heard. However, it goes beyond aesthetic prejudice. The performance is also about how this racism concerning our appearances collaborates to keep black people in a subordinate position.
There are direct ways in which racism acts, as how the non-acceptance of our aesthetics limits the places we occupy. For example, in work positions in which aesthetic appearance is crucial, we hardly see black people. Like on TV and in fashion. As a teenager, I used to buy a lot of teen magazines, and it was very rare to have a black model, and when I did, she had her hair straightened. And it happens in soap operas, in newspapers, in advertisements. This has improved, but still very little.
Here I am only mentioning professions in which appearance is decisive. However, in all others, racism about black aesthetics also influences. Often during the job interview, the interviewer does not always speak directly about not hiring because of our appearance, but often that is the case. And there are cases when the person actually hears directly that will not be hired because of the hair. Or the employee asks the person to straighten their hair to have the vacancy.
That is why, in the performance, I wear clothes that refer to an enslaved woman, but it is not necessarily to refer to the slavery period. To this day, I believe that there is a perpetuation of keeping black people in contemporary slave quarters. The positions of subordination that black people and especially black women find themselves in are as if they were an extension of the plantation house and the slave quarters. When I went to university, there were almost no black students, but black people were the majority on the cleaning team, for example.
So, when I created the work, the act of washing those objects, which are household objects, they refer not only to the hair, but also to this position of subordination in which the black woman is often placed in our society. The black woman is still the majority in the position of the maid, the person who cares for the home, the person who serves others and the home.
You have worked with some important institutions both in Brazil and internationally. There’s a recent effort from many art institutions to join the decolonial turn. How do you see this process?
I will be frank that I do not think of the word decolonization. I think this word has been used a lot lately, and I never did my research specifically in this way, in the sense that the term decolonial was never central to my research. But I understand that it is a process. I understand that we live in a society in which colonial thoughts and practices are deeply rooted. And we need a lot of attention and awareness, to even how our thinking can be reproducing such practices.
It has only been a few years since my work has gained visibility and recognition that has led me to deal with institutions, and I understand that it is a difficult task. Mainly because, unfortunately, we still need these institutions. I could try to live without working with them, but it would be much more difficult, and I don't think I would be able to make a living with my artistic practice alone, I would probably need to do other things to supplement the income, which was what I did for many years. So that today I can live off my work, but I have to deal directly with institutions.
And I have been thinking about how institutions treat us. I never got accurate information, but I am often interested in, for example, knowing how much white artists earn. And I would like to know if they are paying me as much as they pay for them. When I started working with some institutions, I had no idea how much to charge. And it was a black person who taught me about it. I suggested a price, which was how much I would charge for places in Belo Horizonte, and the person said that he would pay me more than I had asked. That person could have taken advantage and agreed to pay what I asked, despite knowing that it was below. But only when that person offered me a better amount that I had an idea. Even today, I still think that they don't pay me the same amount paid for white artists in similar career moments. I was once told in informal conversations the fee of a white artist at the same institution that I have already presented myself a few times, and it was a more considerable amount. It is not verbalized, but we know that the discrepancy exists.
Over time, I established some parameters. Today, depending on the place, if I am asked to use my work for free, I do not accept it. It is complicated because today I can accept not working for free, but years ago it would not have been possible, as I would have to agree with exhibiting for visibility to present my work. Today I understand that this is a precarization of our work. Of course I evaluate the place. If they ask me to present my work in a public school, some social project maintained independently, it is another situation. If it is something that I understand that there is no real budget, I can evaluate the proposal. But there is something we need to be very attentive. I happened to work for free in a cultural institution because they told me it was a project aimed at the visibility of black people's art, and the project had no funds. They said "all participating artists collaborated to happen", so I did it for free. And then found out that they had money. Some people received it, and others did not. And that's also how I have been rethinking the places I go. If it is a white institution, I will not go for free at all. Indeed, someone is gaining something in that place because there is no way for an institution to be open without any money. Someone is making a profit from the existence of that institution.
Another thing I've been trying to do is bring other people in. By talking about other artists to people that are in a position to make other artists' works visible. Either who creates programs, or is involved in curatorship and try to bring other artists of color to expand and occupy that space. So we can have more black people present in those places because there is still this issue of the single black artist. Most institutions still have this idea. As if a single black person in the program was going to contemplate a particular agenda.
The new catchphrase is the anti-racist fight, you know, institutions that want to support diversity. It is also a trap that some institutions have adopted. They make an exhibition with one artwork about racism, one artwork about women, one artwork about gender issues, and that's it! We are diverse.
We still have to be attentive to understand what context we are being inserted in those places, not to be used as a token, like an anti-racist shield for institutions. And to be able to circumvent with our possibility of existence. Reconcile our struggle with our ways of living.
I think that when European institutions propose decolonization, they don't consider any kind of reparation first. I think it is absurd because the non-reparation, the non-restructuring of these colonized, exploited and enslaved countries, renders today the need for dependence. The territory is independent, but independence is rhetorical, not practical. We still occupy positions in "underdeveloped" countries, because since our economy and currency are never what theirs are, we need to accept everything they impose. After all, if we don't agree, we're the ones who lose. They reaped the rewards and profits and never shared them.
And the discourse of decolonizing institutions through tokenist programming is how whiteness disguises its guilt. Whiteness keeps the dominant role of decision making. When they can include other people, they include them in a supporting position and not in a leading role. They want us as guests, while they continue to occupy the place of power, instead of allowing us to be in those places. For instance, in European universities, they study everyone, they specialize in Asian history, Latin American art, African art, Afro-diasporic. Still, they continue to occupy the places of power talking about our cultures and including us only as guests when it is their desire or convenience.
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